Oh geez, I’m all sick and stuffy. I’ve been like this for 3 days now. And to top it off, today I had to sing in round 2 of that Yonkers Public Library-contest-thingie. How did I do? We'll get to that in a second. After getting a good luck from Issis, I bumped into Taiesha again (I became friends with her when she joined the board of education crew) and I (with her help) found the bathroom. We were both pretty nervous. Last time she could barely sing a word of "Over the Rainbow". One of her friends, the semi-typecasted black-loud friend was also supporting her. Funny, he sang first (out of the 3 of us) and pretty much tanked. But he was in the crowd afterwards yelling "You better work" or "You go girl" out to the people on stage. I confronted him about being a "Black-loud-gay-ish-typecast" but he called himself "Original". Whatever. To me you just type-casted yourself.

Then out of nowhere, my father goes to me (he was sitting in back) and goes "Isn't that guy a classmate of yours?" I turn over into the middle seats and lo and behold Aaron Ilardi . He walks over and goes to me "So what are you doing?" I was all like, "Hopefully singing, I'm sick, ya know." And he nodded and went back to his friends. (Off topic: I did a google after I got home ["Aaron Ilardi, Yonkers] and supposedly, Aaron has become a theater-type, heh heh) I think he was a little surprised that I was singing.

Anywho, I was up right after this Asian girl. AND WHAT DOES SHE DO? SHE GOES "PLEASE EXCUSE ME, I'M SICK". Bitch stole my excuse! But she did pretty good and she made it to the final show. So I go up and go "This may sound familiar, but I'm also sick" and I picked an easier song, "Right here waiting". I only did a verse and chorus acapella. People were clapping to the beat in the back. Later I found out that they were Roosevelt-ians, but I'll get to that later. I surprised myself and did great. I think I also shocked Aaron, since back in 8th grade he was more of the "lead singer" type. I have a more "whole" sound in my voice than he did. (But again, I’m jumping ahead)

So I'm handed a "golden ticket" and was instructed to wait for this woman. She supposedly was a hairdresser from a salon nearby and she had her makeup guy with her. She went with me, Tiesha, this girl who sang Joyful Joyful, and this other girl and basically said stuff about looking original. When she got to me she was like, I’d trim the sides (I didn't want a haircut yesterday cuz I was coughing and I feared I'd f-up my hair) and then she's like, how about highlights? Maybe red? I laughed inside because around the same time last year my hair was red/brown. Then she was like "how about spikes"? and I shrugged and said "I never really tried it". I've had the sorta scruffy hair before, but not extreme spikes. It's too Albanian for me. I thought in my head, maybe I'll slick back my hair, that'll cause a semi-spike look.

I walked back into the auditorium and Aaron was performing. He sounded sorta Nick Carter-whispery ish. But as you can see I'm bad at descriptions. The thing that I thought was funny and did expect this from him was that he sang Christina Aguilera's "The Voice Within". Again a-sorta whispery. I think he made it to the finals. He's the one whose ass will have to be kicked. Sorry Aaron, this is a competition and I'm going to bring my A-game.

There were quite a few people from Roosevelt though. Gary (who I always thought sounded bad, and he stayed there), some of the other band people (That Asian girl who always says Hi to Issis in the halls shook my hand and said, "You did great"), and Willie (who did a poem about how Yonkers Public Schools has not helped him).

How many times did I hear anything from Usher? 4 Times. 3 "Yeah"s and 1 "Burn". I'm just saying, maybe the two dancer girls should pick another song since there was another group of girls who did a dance to "yeah" too.